Man Accused Of Battery Against 2-Year-Old Testifies

Man Accused Of Battery Against 2-Year-Old Testifies

A man accused of abusing his 2-year-old son told a Sebastian County jury Tuesday that two doctors who testified about how and when his son was injured were wrong.

Bobby Lee Pitchford, 26, of Fort Smith is charged with first-degree battery against his son, Tristan Stepanian, who was life-flighted Sept. 25 to Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock for an emergency surgery on a perforated small intestine. Pitchford’s trial began Monday.

Dr. Richard Marshall, a pediatric surgeon at Children’s Hospital, testified Monday that Tristan’s bowel injury is most common in toddlers when they’re involved in car wrecks that occur at between 50 and 60 mph.

Dr. Rachel Clingenpeel, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital specializing in child abuse cases, said if Tristan’s perforated bowel was caused by a household, childhood accident like the one Pitchford described in a statement to police, the hospital would be full of children.

“This was severe blunt-force trauma; this is not a childhood accident,” Clingenpeel told jurors Tuesday.

When police interviewed him within days of Tristan being hospitalized, Pitchford told detective Jeff Taylor, Fort Smith police, that Tristan was inured Sept. 24.

Pitchford told Taylor that Tristan jumped off a child’s picnic table and landed on a Tonka Toy dump truck and within an hour was also hit in the stomach with a toy guitar by another 2-year-old.

Both Marshall and Clingenpeel also testified that the latest Tristan suffered a perforated bowel was Sept. 23; Marshall said it was possible the injury occurred as early as Sept. 20, based on the nature of the injury and amount of infection he discovered during surgery.

Pitchford and his wife Rachael cared for Tristan for about six weeks, until Sept. 24, while Tristan’s mother and Pitchford’s ex-wife, Robin Stepanian, was in Tulsa, where she was planning to move.

When deputy prosecuting attorney Robert McClure confronted Pitchford with evidence Tristan was with him when he suffered the perforated bowel, Pitchford argued the doctor’s testimony wasn’t evidence.

Pitchford said the testimony was only opinion and doctors make mistakes. When asked if Marshall was wrong about when Tristan was injured, Pitchford said yes.

When confronted with contradictions between his testimony Tuesday and an earlier statement to police, Pitchford rejected the suggestion he lied; instead he said he was confused and mistaken when he spoke to police.

When he testified, Pitchford told jurors Tristan was struck with the guitar Sept. 20 or 21 and fell on the Tonka truck Sept. 24.

Pitchford said he got his dates mixed up when he spoke to Taylor, but provided no explanation when McClure pointed out he provided details to Taylor to explain why he remembered the incidents both happened Sept. 24.

Clingenpeel told jurors that a child who falls out a two-story window doesn’t have as many bruises as Tristan had when she examined him Sept. 25 following his emergency surgery. Clingenpeel also said multiple bruises on the neck, back, stomach and hip aren’t typical of accidental injuries children regularly experience.

Pitchford testified Tristan had some of the bruises Sept. 24 that were documented in the emergency room at Mercy Sept. 25, but said others weren’t there Sept. 24 “when he (Tristan) left my house.”

Tristan was with his mother from the afternoon of Sept. 24 until early in the afternoon Sept. 25, when he was taken to Mercy Hospital and then life-flighted to Children’s Hospital.